In Nigerian markets, haggling is a sport that is deeply cultural and a rite of passage for every child, male or female. There are two contenders, buyer and seller, but only one wins the duel at the end of the day, the person whose offer is accepted. It is a form of socialisation and a practice handed down from one generation to the next. You will often hear parents introducing their children to the art of haggling with comments like “Did you see how I got the price I wanted?” to which the enthralled child will respond “wow”.
After repeated visits to a particular market, the contenders become familiar with each other, there is an anticipation of jostling in price negotiations and both buyer and seller often end the match with friendly call outs of the next match date.
Today, haggling has become an extreme sport in Nigeria. The friendly price jostling between buyers and sellers is no more. It has been replaced by cryptic responses of “oga if you no fit buy am, leave am”. Friendly calls of “my customer”, which used to be the loud background melody of bustling markets are now no more than half-hearted whispers.
Why? The price of everything has skyrocketed so much so that even alternative food options are now out of reach. Inflation stands at 15.92% as of March 2022 while food inflation has been on the rise since 2019 and stands at 17.20% today.
Nigeria’s food Index, defined by the Food and Agricultural organisation as a measure of the monthly change in prices of a basket of food commodities, has been on the rise since 2019.
In Nigeria in times past, when one food item became pricey another food item can serve as a replacement. For example, if you can’t afford vegetable oil, you can replace it with palm oil. If one variety of beans is too expensive, there is likely a cheaper variety that will fit your pocket. Food items like garri, spaghetti, sweet potato, used to be cheaper alternatives for food but this is no longer the case. A review of select “alternative” food items between 2019 and 2022 show a four-year increase in price.
Nigeria’s minimum wage at N33,000 is actually worth just 34 litres of groundnut Oil, that is Nigeria’s minimum wage can only buy 34 litres of groundnut oil. If you used to spend N736 on 2kg of Beans before, the national average shows that you will spend well over a thousand naira now, and could be more depending on your location.
Asides from the rising price of food items, cooking the items has become costlier too. Homes in Nigeria use Gas, Kerosene, Charcoal or a combination of 1 or two of these for cooking. Kerosene and charcoal used to be the cost effective cooking option but its increasing price has raised the question of affordability. Between 2019 and 2022, the price of kerosene has increased by 46.17%.
Food Crisis is Looming Large
The implications of these increases are predictions of high figures of persons that will go hungry in the country. Already, 19.4 million persons are projected to be thrown into a food crisis if the issues around food inflation continues. Already, an estimated 14.4 million people including 385,000 IDPs are already in a food crisis.
Nigeria’s Crop Production nominal GDP growth may explain the veracity of a looming food crisis.
The World bank had in 2021 warned of the dangers of continued inflation in the country, advocating for critical reforms such as policies that support macroeconomic stability, inclusive growth, and job creation, protection of poor households as well as increased access to finance for small and medium organisations.
Urgent Need to Tackle Food Crisis
Nigeria’s continued food insufficiency and rising food prices have been blamed largely on conflict and insurgency in parts of the country. According to the Borgen project, this conflict has affected the agricultural sufficiency of the country, raising concerns on the need to tackle the conflicts.
The Farmer-Herder crisis is one such conflict that directly impacts on food availability and accessibility. The Food and Agriculture Organisation have advocated the need for peaceful co-existence to solve the Farmers-herders crisis. The World bank also advocated policies that encourage macroeconomic stability in the country, inclusive of growth and job creation.
Access to finance has also been described as one of the factors affecting the cost of production, and the government needs policies that improves access to finances for small and medium scale enterprises, so as to encourage recoveries especially after the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.